On the twenty-third we burnt his remains with despairing hearts, my boy, who went down with him last Autumn, being dressed exquisitely and much attended, followed the bier weeping in black clothes with hateful things [mourning insignia] on them. My feeling when I saw him going out can never be expressed. I seemed to wander in dreams and thought that human life must soon cease here. If I had not given myself up to idle fictions [she herself had written several] and poetry, but had practised religious austerities night and day, I would not have seen such a dream-world.
At Hasé Temple a cedar branch was cast down to me by the Inari god and this thing [the loss of her husband] would not have happened if I had visited the Inari shrine on my way home. The dreams which I had seen in these past years which bid me pray to the Heaven Illuminating Honoured Goddess meant that I should have been in the Imperial Court as a nurse, sheltered behind the favour of the King and Queen—so the dream interpreter interpreted my dream, but I could not realize this. Only the sorrowful reflection in the mirror was realized unaltered. O pitiful and sorrowful I! Thus nothing could happen as I willed, and I wandered in this world doing no virtuous deed for the future life.
Life seemed to survive sorrows, but I was uneasy at the thought that things would happen against my will, even in the future life. There was only one thing I could rely on.
Ceaseless tears—clouded mind:
Bright scene—moon-shadow.
On the thirteenth of the Tenth month [1055] I dreamed one night this dream:
There in the garden of my house at the farthest ledge stood Amitabha Buddha! He was not seen distinctly, but as if through a cloud. I could snatch a glimpse now and then when the cloud lifted. The lotus-flower pedestal was three or four feet above the ground; the Buddha was about six feet high.
Golden light shone forth; one hand was extended, the fingers of the other were bent in form of benediction. None but I could see him, yet I felt such reverence that I dared not approach the blind to see him better. None but I might hear him saying, "Then this time I will go back, and afterwards come again to receive you." I was startled and awoke into the fourteenth day. This dream only was my hope for the life to come.[84]
I had lived with my husband's nephews, but after that sad event we parted not to meet again. One very dark night I was visited by the nephew who was living at Rokuhara; I could not but welcome so rare a guest.
No moon, and darkness deepens
Around Obásuté. Why have you come?
It cannot be to see the moon![85]
After that time [the death of her husband] an intimate friend stopped all communication.